What are the site navigation methods, with one index.php?

Question

PHP

I want to make a light website and try to implement navigation. In theory, a person entering the site launches index.php which determines the url. If, for example, /catalog/ comes after the domain, then display $catalog.

The question is, at first I thought that I needed a 404 redirect, but then I wondered where to get that very url/catalog from if the redirect reloads the page. I heard about shamanism with .htaccess, but I don't know how it works. The same question arose about SEO optimization.

If the condition is written in index.php:

if $path = 'catalog/'
 - - - echo $catalog;
elif $path = 'contact/'
 - - - echo $contact;
else:
 - - - echo $page_not_found

And in the sitemap.xml to indicate that the contact and catalog pages exist, can these pages be adequately indexed in searches?

I am interested in the shortest and simplest method of implementation, without complications and goodies. Please tell me how to implement this principle.

Answer 1

Google "PHP Router". There will be both about CNC and about mod_rewrite.
In a nutshell, you need to redirect all requests to index.php - this is done through htaccess
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L,QSA]
Next, in index.php, get, for example, $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], parse it, for example, parse_url, and then, depending on the result

Answer 2

write in the address bar of your browser, PHP CNC

Answer 3

mod_rewrite